Digital cameras with panoramic photography capabilities are commercially available. Mobile telephones with built in digital cameras are also commercially available. Typically, editing and/or manipulation solutions for panoramic images are performed on a separate computing device not incorporated into the camera or phone handset.
In general, panoramic photography refers to production of photographic images with exceptionally wide fields of view. Panoramic images typically capture a field of view comparable to, or greater than, that of the human eye, about 160° by 75°. Maintenance of detail across the entire picture contributes to a perceived image quality. Panoramic indicates that the image offers an unobstructed or complete view of an area. In many cases, panoramic images are presented as a wide strip.
Production of a panoramic image often involves capturing overlapping photographic frames and matching, or “stitching” the frames together at their overlapping edges.
The following patents and applications are generally indicative of current panoramic technology in “stand alone” cameras. The list does not purport to be exhaustive.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,138,460 by Egawa describes an apparatus for forming composite images. Egawa's apparatus includes a display device for displaying an image to be photographed such as a portion of an object, a memory device for storing data concerning an image which has been already photographed such as a previously photographed portion of the object, and a control device for enabling the display device to substantially simultaneously display both the image to be photographed and the image already photographed and stored as data in the memory device. The disclosure of this patent is fully incorporated herein by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,907,626 to Toklu et al describes method for motion tracking and constructing a mosaic of video objects as well as a method for synthetic object transfiguration from a mosaic. According to Toklu, a 2-D triangular mesh is employed to represent a video object, which permits to describe the motion of the object by the displacements of the node points of the mesh, and to describe any intensity variations by the contrast and brightness parameters estimated for each node point. Using a temporal history of the node point locations, the nodes of the 2-D mesh are tracked even when they become invisible because of self-occlusion or occlusion by another object. By adding new nodes or updating the 2-D triangular mesh, any uncovered parts of the video object are incrementally added to the mosaic. A finite number of views representing the constructed mosaic are selected and used for synthetic transfiguration of a replacement object in place of the original one. The disclosure of this patent is fully incorporated herein by reference.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,999,662 and 6,393,163 to Burt et al. each describe a system for automatically generating a mosaic from a plurality of input images. The system sequentially executes an image alignment process, an editing process, and a combining process such that, from a sequence of images, the system automatically produces a seamless mosaic for various applications. The mosaic based display system permits a system user to display, manipulate and alter a mosaic. The mosaic based compression system exploits the temporal and spatial redundancy in image sequences and efficiently compresses the image information. The compression system can be used for compressing image information for storage in a storage device or can be used for compressing image information for transmission through a band-limited transmission channel. The disclosures of these patents are fully incorporated herein by reference.
United States Patent Application 20040189849 by Hofer describes a panoramic sequence guide that can be used to guide a user in composing and capturing images to be used to create a composite panoramic image. In use, the guide tracks a viewed scene, determines the proper position of a composition guide relative to the viewed scene, and displays a composition guide on a live-view screen that provides an indication of what portion of the viewed scene is to be captured. The displayed composition guide is fixed to the viewed scene such that the guide moves with the viewed scene in the screen. The disclosure of this application is fully incorporated herein by reference.
Korean patent 0286306 to Choi describes a method of panoramic photography which uses a digital still camera to easily connect pictures to construct a panoramic picture using an LCD monitor. The disclosure of this patent is fully incorporated herein by reference.
United States Patent Application 2004/0228544 by Takaaki et al. describes an image processing method and apparatus for generating a panoramic image in which the hue or brightness discontinuities generated at the seams of source images are reduced. Upon compositing source images having an overlap portion, the hue or brightness of each source image is converted using a reference image which has overlap portions with both the source images to be composited and the converted images are composited, thereby reducing the hue or brightness discontinuities generated at the seam of images. The disclosure of this application is fully incorporated herein by reference.
U.S. patent applications 2006/0062487, 2006/0018547, 2005/0200706, 2005/0008254 and 2004/0130626 by Ouchi et al. describe an image processing apparatus for generating graphics data representing a single seamless planar image synthesized from a multiple sets of graphics data contained in a plurality of graphics files which establishes a spheroidal or cylindrical projection plane for synthesis of the multiple sets of graphics data. The disclosure of each of these applications is fully incorporated herein by reference.
The following patents and applications are generally indicative of current panoramic technology in cameras “built in” to mobile phone handsets. The list does not purport to be exhaustive.
International application WO/2005/041564 by KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS ELECTRONICS N.V. describes a digital camera with panorama or mosaic functionality. The invention relates to an electronic device with a digital camera, and to a method of enabling to create a composite picture using a digital camera. In some embodiments, the electronic device is a mobile phone. The disclosure of this application is fully incorporated herein by reference.
United States Patent Application 20060181619 to Liow et al. describes a method for forming a panoramic image using a camera. According to Liow, a blending area is formed in a first image on a display of the camera. The camera is moved before being prepared to take a second photograph. In the blending area only, a pixel matching process is performed for determining an alignment of the portion of the first image in the blending area and part of a second image of the second photograph in the blending area. In some embodiments, the method is practiced using a camera in a mobile phone. The disclosure of this application is fully incorporated herein by reference.
There are commercially available panoramic picture technologies available for mobile phones. These technologies include, but are not necessarily limited to:
Scalado Autorama™ (Scalado AB; Sweden);
Vivid Panorama (Acrodea; Tokyo; Japan); and
PanoMan™ (Bit Side Technologies; Berlin; Germany).
Korean Patent 20060006186 to LG electronics describes taking a panoramic picture while transparently showing the part of the panoramic picture already taken.